1 Developing Mental Toughness

Developing Mental Toughness

Garrett Butler
E&H College

2 Developing Mental Toughness

Table of Contents
Abstract

Qualities That Create or Cause Lack of Mental Toughness

Carol Dwecks Research Study: Two Mindsets

How to Develop Mental Toughness

Conclusion

14

Critical Thinking

15

Work Cited

17

3 Developing Mental Toughness

Abstract
This paper goes into depth about a specific character trait that an athlete experiences
throughout their playing career; however in this paper the characteristic is applied to the sports
world. In this character trait, an individual can fail at it multiple times, but one can also be
successful at times. In the eyes of a coach, this character trait can show the maturity level of an
individual athlete. In times of competition, opposing teams feast off the character trait based on
how fearful an individual looks and plays. Furthermore, an individual or even a teammate can be
tested on their character maturity when pressure is put on them by outside forces like the media,
community fan base and sponsors. What is this character trait? The character trait referenced to
is called mental toughness. The paper will start out by discussing the different qualities that
either create or cause a lack of mental toughness in an athletes mind; how fear and pressure can
lead to mental weakness in crucial times. Then the paper will explore a research project
conducted by a professor at the University of Stanford where the professor goes into depth
discussing two different mindsets, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. The professor discusses
how there are two different minded people in the world and how the two minds correlate to why
some individuals can have mental toughness and some lack mental toughness. For the last point
the paper will go into depth about several different ways an individual can develop mental
toughness. One scholarly source describes a four step process on how to develop mental
toughness for both a player and a coach. In two different Ted talks, two doctors explained how
growth mindset is key to developing mental toughness in an individual. In another scholarly
source, an author goes into depth about how an individual can remove fear from their minds and
create mental toughness.

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Qualities That Create or Cause Lack of Mental Toughness

Do we really know what mental toughness is? If so, do we really know what causes a
weakness in our mental toughness? Two local teams are playing in a decisive baseball game
towards the end of the season. Team A is nationally ranked and has won the state title the last
three years. Team B is a fairly new school, but has very talented players and are well coached;
they know that they are good, but the community still doubts their ability to beat Team A. After a
hard fought game, Team A comes out on top beating the other team by two runs. In the postgame speech, the coach explains that he believes that the team played good; however, Team A
beat them in the mental game, they had more mental toughness than Team B. To a coach it may
seem simple on what it means that the other team was mentally tough, but more times than not
the players are clueless on what mental toughness means and what contributes to the lack of it.
In the book One Goal by Bill Beswick, he discusses in one of the later chapters how to
handle pressure. In the chapter Beswick lists five key pressures that he believes can affect a
teams mindset during competition:
Performance pressure: the expectations of others and the consequences of defeat
leading to anxiety and fear.
Competition pressure: making decisions and executing skills when challenged and
under fatigue leading to confusion, lack of confidence and errors.
Time pressure: the need to respond quickly throughout the game and at the end of game
when the clock is ticking down leading to anxiety and frustrations.
Distraction pressure: the crowd, the noise and incidents on the field distracting attention
and leading to a loss of focus.
Emotional pressure: refereeing decisions, mistakes and frustration with teammates
leading to anger and loss of composure.
(Beswick, 2016)

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A team or individuals success depends on their ability to cope with these five pressures while on
the playing field. It is not often we see a team or individual able to go through a season without
failing to handle pressure throughout a game or the season. For professional athletes more so
today, the amount of pressure put on them can sometimes be too much for a player to handle. A
prime example of an athlete cracking under pressure is Ron Artest. During his time with the
Indianapolis Pacers, Ron Artest was known for the inability to control his anger. In one game a
fan threw something at Artest after a scuffle had broken out during the game and Artest did not
like what the fan did. In reaction to the incident, Artest went into the stands with an aggressive
intent and started beating up a fan; however, the fan that Artest had beaten up was not the
instigator that threw the object. This incident can be classified as two pressures: distraction and
emotional. The emotional pressure of how bad the Pacers were playing added to the distraction
pressure when the patron threw an object at Artest. To be a mentally tough athlete or team,
pressure must be controlled by finding ways, specific to each individual or team, to block out all
temptations to react that may occur during game.
For youth athletes, pressure could be as detrimental to them as it is to some professional
athletes; however, each level has different variables that contribute to pressure. The biggest
variable youth athletes face is social or peer pressure. As Beswick stated in his book young
athletes hold common irrational perceptions: my self-worth is on the line in this game, I must
perform to please others and I must be perfect (Beswick, 2016). When young athletes begin to
allow their perception on what people will think if they dont hit the game winning shot or make
the game winning kick, then they will already have lost before they get the chance to make the
game winning field or hit the game winning shot, because the pressure has deterred their
mentality from focused to fearful. Pressure only exists when anxiety overwhelms confidence

6 Developing Mental Toughness

and becomes fear in a players mind (Beswick, 2016). This leads to the next quality that creates
or causes a lack of mental toughness in an individual or team.
Everyone has something that they are scared of in sports; scared of that freshman football
coach that used to be a drill Sargent in the army or the basketball coach that picks a chair up and
throws it across the court. Fear, real or imagined, can be crippling (Bell, 2015, p. 4). One of the
biggest fears that athletes experience is fear of failure. When an athlete fears failure often times
the athlete fears letting down his/her coach and teammates and not making his/her parents proud.
The instant an athlete lets fear into his/her mind; their performance begins to decline. In his
book Win Forever, Pete Carroll talks about how he recognized fear can be a hindrance on athletic
performance: In my time as a coach, Ive learned that possibly the greatest detractor from high
performance is fear. Fear you are not prepared, fear you are in over your head, fear that you are
not worthy, and ultimately fear of failure (Carroll, 2010, p 177-178). Through several years of
coaching at the college level and professional level, Carroll realized how effective fear was on
his players athletic performance in games. From the observation Carroll went on to conclude
that losing results from fear and if left un-attended could result in a losing streak. Fears best
deception is to distract us, moving our attention away from the process to look at how events will
turn out (Bell, 2015, p.4).
Often when a coach explains how mental toughness is the weakest point in the team; their
reasoning most of the time is maturity. However, is maturity really a logical explanation for a
lack of mental toughness? Although maturity can be associated with mental toughness, pressure
and fear are a more specific reason behind a lack of mental toughness in an individual or team.
Maturity in relation to mental toughness can better be described as how an individual or team
handles mental toughness. Therefore leading to the conclusion of this point; going back to the

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local baseball team analogy. Instead of the coach for Team B telling his players that the other
team had more mental toughness than they did. The coach should explain to his players how the
other team handled the pressure situations better and were not fearful during some of the more
intense moments of the game.
Carol Dweck Research Study: Two Mindsets
In a research study conducted by Carol Dweck, Ph.D., she looked at how kids coped with
challenges and difficulty. Dr. Dweck is known to the world as one of the top leading researchers
in the field of motivation. Professionally, Dr. Dweck taught at Columbia University and Harvard
University; today she teaches psychology at Stanford University. She has had multiple works
published in her own books as well as newspaper, (i.e. The New York Times). In a Ted Talk that
Dr. Dweck spoke at in Norrkoping, Sweden, she explains her research and the results she
determined from the research. In her research she gave a group of 10 year olds some challenging
problems that were above their learning capacity. Afterwards, Dr. Carol Dweck explains how she
received two different reactions to the challenging questions from the 10 year olds. The first
reaction she saw was a positive response to the questions; the kids told her that they loved a
challenge! From their reactions Dr. Dweck determined that these kids had what she called a
growth mindset; the kids believe that their abilities can be developed over time. The second
reaction that was received from the rest of the kids came from a mindset that Dr. Dweck called a
fixed mindset; the kids saw the challenging questions as catastrophic and tragic while their
intelligence was put to the test and ultimately failed.
Believing that your qualities are carved into stonethe fixed mindsetcreates an
urgency to prove yourself over and over (Dweck, 2006, p. 6). In one word, Dr. Dweck describes
a person with a fixed mindset as now. So in the futurewhat will they do next?has become

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an alarming question for Dr. Dweck and her research team to think about. Through the study that
Dr. Dweck performed on 10 year old kids with a fixed mindset told researchers that they would
most likely cheat rather than study for the challenging questions next time. Therefore, in minds
of these 10 year olds, they did not believe that they could develop the knowledge to be able to
answer the challenging questions successfully. Other traitsof which have been researched and
concluded by Dr. Dweckthat corresponds with a fixed mindset person are one, the kids will
find someone that performed worse than them to help ease the pain of failure; two, the kids will
more than likely run from a challenging situation. Ultimately, the kids that suffer from a fixed
mindset are generally the kids that looked for every short cut possible whether in school,
workouts or practice.

Fixed Mindset

Talent,not effort
Outcome not process
Establish superiority
Reat to setbacks
Avoid risk

Growth Mindset

Work in progress
Focus on process
Love the challenge
Deal with setbacks
Continual improvement

(Beswick, 2016, p.22)

It is often said from day to day that patience is a virtue. When studying growth mindset
the growth takes development, development takes time and time takes patience. To have a
growth mindset an individual has to have what Professor Dweck calls a not yet mentality and
patience in the processas shown in the figure aboveof which they go through to better their
intelligence. However, growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things
you can cultivate through you efforts (Dweck, 2006, p.7). In Dr. Dwecks opinion, a person with

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growth mindset also has to believe that they can gain knowledge through their effort. In her
mind, even though the kids like the challenge and believe that they can eventually conquer it,
success is not just going to come to them; instead, the kids need to put the effort in to learn the
skills and information to eventually conquer the challenge they face.
When you apply these two mindsets to an athlete or an athletic team it is easy to
distinguish who fits in which mindset. Similar to what the figure on the last page portrays, teams
that are more invested in the outcome of the game and how talented they are as a team can be
labeled a fixed mindset team. Fixed mindset teams ultimately cannot handle setbacks or failure
well. However, a team that is centered around the growth mindset invest more on the process to
be better, see challenges as an opportunity and accept success as progress. Teams with the growth
mindset characterization, deal with setbacks as a learning experience and value hard work of
preparation (Beswick, 2016, p22).
How to Develop Mental Toughness
There are different opinions on how to develop mental toughness in an individual or a
team. Generally, when the topic of developing mental toughness or describing someone with
good mental toughness whether through printed material or person to person interaction one
word comes up constituently; grit (firmness of mind or spirit: unyielding courage in the face of
hardship or danger(Merriam-Webster)). Often when we see an individual or team succeed in
crucial moments of a sporting game, a coach will then use the individual or team as an example
to their players that the individual or team showed grit in the most crucial moments and that is
why they won the game. Although grit is a great way to describes a state of how mentally tough a
team or individual is, it still fails at teaching how to become mentally tough. As Angela Lee

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Duckworth explained in her Ted Talk, to me what is shocking thing about grit is how little we
know, how little science knows about building it!
In Bill Beswicks book Focused for Soccer: How to Win the Mental Game; he lists four
steps how an athlete and a coach can develop mental toughness. Developing mental toughness in
Beswicks mind can lead to a winning attitude in oneself, players, and coaching. The four steps
to developing mental toughness as a player consist of (1) Develop a Strong Self-Identityin
games stay positive about yourself remembering that you are already a winner and portray an
image of a winner. When a mistake is made accept the responsibility for the mistake; dont make
excuses. Most importantly stay confident through everything that occurs in the game. (2)
Become and Stay Motivatedthrough success and failure, commitment should never be
questioned by a player. When faced with past failure, an athlete needs to stay motivated to keep
going out onto the field game after game. Lastly, a player should accept criticism from coaches
and outside influences. (3) Establish a Work Ethicin a game for a player to have confidence in
themselves they must believe that they have prepared physically and mentally for the challenge
ahead of them in a game. Motivation and confidence are inextricably linked with the
willingness and capacity to work hard to ensure the best chance of success (Beswick, 2010, p.
118). The players that become mentally tough know when to work hard and when to take time
off to recover. (4) Develop Self-Controlplayers must control their emotions when they come
upon adversity during a game. When faced with adversity, mentally tough players see the
challenge in the game as an opportunity for them to overcome a big obstacle that they may or
may not have conquered yet. If the mentally tough player fails at the challenge, they accept that a
setback occurred and control their emotions not allowing the anger of failing present a negative
energy to the team.

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For coaches Beswick also has a four step list for helping a team build mental toughness
as a whole. (1) Creating the Mind-Setif the coach sets the example that he/she believes that the
team can win during any challenge thrown at the team, then the players will follow and soon
develop the same mindset. To create a mentally tough mindset, a coach should recruit players not
only on talent, but character as well and find leaders to push the team. (2) Learning Through
Failurethe coachs reaction to failure is key to the players motivation and desire to work hard
to correct mistakes (Beswick, 2010, p.120). Failure is an opportunity for a coach to explain
what the teams weakness is and how to eliminate that weakness. (3) Preparing Emotionallyin
practice coaches should take the opportunity to prepare a team or individual for the threat of
losing control emotionally in an emotionally unstable game. A player left unprepared to cope
with emotions in a game can lead to negative actions. (4) Self-Referencingthe mentally tough
players accept responsibility for any mistake that they make or negative action that they commit
in a game. Coaches can help by questioning and listeningnot always telling players what they
did wrong but encouraging them to talk about what they could have done better (Beswick,
2010,p.123).
How can fear be conquered? In his book No Fear: A Simple Guide to Mental Toughness;
Dr. Rob Bell goes into depth on how he believes fear can be conquered. He picks a word or
phrase for each letters in No Fear that he believes will help people win the battle against fear
and develop mental toughness:
N Never Give Up
O Obstacles into Opportunities
F Focus
E Re-Focus

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A Attitude
R Respond, Dont React
When a player starts going through the motions or quits, believing that practice or chance
of winning is not important to the team any more, it makes giving up easier in the future and an
excuse. By never giving up in any situations, win or lose, during game, players show a mentally
tough mindset and will be hard for them to give up as long as they play. Obstacles present
themselves for a reason; however, the challenge is to see who will take the opportunity to
overcome it; who wants to succeed? For mentally tough players, the opportunity to face
obstacles doesnt scare them away; instead, the players embrace them. To stay mentally sharp
during competition, a mentally tough player realizes that they cannot lose focus on the ultimate
goal until the last second runs off the clock or last out is made. Mentally tough players focus on
playing their game to the best of their ability or helping the team to be successful; they try not let
the other team determine how they play during competition. During times of failure, players have
the choice of dwelling on failure or moving on. The players that move on and re-focus on being
successful to win the next game ahead of them usually are the mentally tough players. They do
not let one game determine their fate for the rest of the season. A positive attitude that mentally
tough players display toward a challenge stems from the excitement of having an opportunity to
face a difficult obstacle ahead of them. Mentally tough players want to be in those situations.
When a player reacts to a failure in a game, they let their emotions take over and affect them for
the rest of the game; these players are not mentally tough. The players that are mentally tough do
not react in crucial moments and let the consequences affect them; instead, they respond in
crucial moments and do not let their emotions dictate their play for the rest of the competition.
If you can eliminate that fearnot through arrogance or just wishing difficulties away but

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through hard work and preparationyou will put yourself in an incredibly powerful position to
take on the challenges you face (Carrol, 2010, p.177-178).
One other skill that research led me to realize how an individual or sometimes a team can
harness mental toughness and not let fear negatively influence their mindset was accepting
failure. While watching Dr. Sean Richardsons Tedx Talk, he explained how accepting failure
was not at all a bad thing. What was a bad thing was not trying or putting effort into what you
fail at; failing while giving 100% was better than failing with no effort at all. In his speech Dr.
Richardson used a quote from Michael Jordan in one of his Nike ads and is also found in Dr.
Dwecks Mindset book:
Ive missed more than nine thousand shots. Ive lost almost three hundred
games. Twenty-six times, Ive been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and
missed.

-Michael Jordan
(Dweck, 2006, p.100)

As Dr. Richardson went on to explain, Michael Jordan was mentally tough and could deal with
adversity while he played with Chicago Bulls because he could accept failure. When a player can
accept failure in competition and understand that they will grow from the failure in the future,
they will then develop mental toughness for future situations that present the opportunity to fail
again.
In order for any of these tools or skills to work one thing has to happen first referencing
back to Dr. Dwecks research study on two different mindsets. For an individual or team to be
able to incorporate and learn from the tools and skills discussed above, the individual or team
must obtain a growth mindset. The individual or team that are mentally tough have a growth
mindset because they do not fear obstacles or failure, they understand setbacks happen and they

14 Developing Mental Toughness

can improve from them and no one can tell them how to play their own game; only they can.
Growth mindset teams believe in the not yet attitude and give a 100% effort no matter if they
win or lose the competitions. Both Dr. Richardson and Angela Lee Duckworth, Psychologist,
believe that growth mindset is the key to developing grit and accepting failure to become
mentally tough.
Conclusion
In conclusion, at the beginning of the paper the qualities that created or caused weakness
in an individual or teams mental toughness were addressed: pressure which stems from when
anxiety over comes confidence and eventually turns to fear. A teams loss in a game can result
from fear and left unattended can lead to multiple losses. A player will lack mental toughness
when they let what other people think affect them and their performance; social pressure can be
detrimental out of all the various pressures. Dr. Dweck explained the idea behind how there are
two different mindsets that kids can have and ultimately determine how well they will react to
pressure and fear, and whether or not the kids will be able to develop and maintain mental
toughness if they do not already possess the quality. To help build mental toughness Bill
Beswick and Dr. Rob Bell introduced their recommendation for developing should go. In Dr.
Rob Bells book, he explained how an individual or team should cope with fear that would then
help them become mentally stronger. Bill Beswick discussed in his book a four step process for
both an athletes and coaches to develop a stronger mental side of the game. He gave a picture on
how a player with mental toughness reacts to pressure situations and how they carried
themselves. For coaches, Beswick gave tips on how coaches should help players nurture mental
toughness in games and practice. Dr. Richardson discussed the idea that failure was not the
problem; not trying was. He explained how an athlete can be mentally stronger if they can accept

15 Developing Mental Toughness

failure. Lastly, the paper discussed that developing mental toughness begins with a person that
has what Dr. Dweck calls growth mindset.
Critical Thinking
In my paper I believe that I elaborated thoroughly on each point. In my first point I gave
an example of how pressure can make a player react viciously in the public eye. Also, I
illustrated how a vague reasoning of mental toughness can do no good to a young teams
comprehension.
I found several books and speakers that talked about pressure, fear and how Carol
Dwecks study could improve a persons mental toughness giving my points accuracy. The
accuracy of the points can be verified by watching the Ted talks in the work cited.
Precision is no question; I believe that I gave very detailed points in my paper. All the
points were specific to the research topic given to me.
My three points are relevant to the topic. People lack the knowledge on what really
creates lack of mental toughness and mental toughness. And each point helps people gain
knowledge on the causes, the whys and the hows to mental toughness.
Fear and pressure make being mentally tough a difficult problem. Some issues that will
need to be dealt with is how to teach players how to be mentally tough without causing a lawsuit
or a cause for question.
People have their own different views on what causes lack of mental toughness, why it
does and how to fix it. However, I believe that I hit the most important factors that cause lack of
mental toughness, found the best reasoning behind which types of players will develop mental

16 Developing Mental Toughness

toughness and which ones will not and I believe that I found several ways that are great for
developing mental toughness.
As a whole I believe that my paper makes complete and total sense. Each point flows into
each one and follows the evidence from the one before it.
In sports I believe that mental toughness and how to develop it; is a important problem to
consider addressing. I think that coaches should focus on what creates lack of mental toughness
and then focus on how to develop it in their team.
For a fact I know I am fully invested in this topic. In our team talks at practices and
games our coaches talk a lot about mental toughness and how it is a big factor. This topic was
actually fun and interesting to learn about and study. I do not believe that I am representing
viewpoints of other people.

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Works Cited
Bell, R., Dr. (2015). No Fear: A Simple Guide to Mental Toughness. DRB Press.
Beswick, B. (2010). Focused for Soccer: How to win the mental game (2nd ed.). Human
Kinetics.
Beswick, B. (2016). One goal: The mindset of winning soccer teams. Human Kinetics.
Carroll, P., Roth, Y., & Garin, K. A. (2010). Win forever: Live, work, and play like a champion.
New York: Portfolio.
Coakley, J. (2015). Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies (11th ed.). McGraw Hill
Education.
Coyle, D. (2009). The talent code: Greatness isn't born: It's grown, here's how. New York:
Bantam Books.
Duckworth, A. L. (2013, April). The key to success? Grit. Retrieved April 09, 2016, from
http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.
Dweck, C. (2014, November). The power of believing that you can improve. Retrieved April 09,
2016, from
http://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve?
language=en#t-565491
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grit
Morin, A. (2015, December 4). The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong | Amy Morin |
TEDxOcala. Retrieved April 09, 2016, from https://youtu.be/TFbv757kup4

18 Developing Mental Toughness

Richardson, S., Dr. (2011). TEDxVictoria - Dr. Sean Richardson - Mental Toughness: Think
Differently about your World. Retrieved April 09, 2016, from https://youtu.be/LCPgvTRftZg